Why do you care so much about gender issues?

[GCScot]

Longtime lurker, first time poster.

I'm fully GC, mainly due to this board. So first of all, thank you for all the excellent thoughtful discussion!

DH and most of my family are also GC. But they don't care about it anywhere near as much as me. This got me wondering - why do some of us care so much about gender ideology?

My reasons are:

1. I'm a lifelong feminist. Gender ideology causes so many issues for women. But the attempted redefinition of the very word woman feels like an actual existential threat

1. I'm a lifelong lefty. Finding myself on 'the other side' to left-wing political parties, friends, and institutions I have trusted all my life (The Guardian, BBC, NHS, universities) has completely thrown me. Am I wrong? If I'm not wrong, how have they gone so spectacularly wrong?

1. I have a science background. The (wilful?) ignorance of the basic science of biological sex and the prioritisation of feelings over facts enrages me

1. I have personally had a double mastectomy and hormone therapy for breast cancer. These were extreme medical treatments to save my life and have long-term health repercussions - I am at high risk of heart disease and osteoporosis. The fact that physically healthy children and vulnerable young people are being encouraged to undergo these treatments makes me sad and angry

1. The 'No debate' aspect of this issue is totally against my values. I work for a fully captured institution (Scottish university) and being unable to freely speak about this issue means that it is frequently running through my mind

Do any of the above resonate with others? Do you have any additional reasons why you care so much about this issue?

I have daughters who due to various things are vulnerable emotionally and physically.

I was implicitly told I could do anything growing up. I didn't really worry too much about sexism, i knew i was equal. These regressive stereotypes worry me.

I think for me, apart from the obvious conflict with women’s rights and damage to children, none of it makes any sense. It’s the same reason I’m an atheist. It’s ridiculous that some people insist we all go along with the nonsense that men can be women. I keep thinking that we’re going to wake up and it was all a dream like Bobby Ewing being in the shower. But too much damage has been done to be so flippant about it.

Once you see it you can't unsee it. I'm not sure those who say they're GC but don't really care that much have really looked properly yet.

The main reason is my quirky, autistic lesbian daughter now believes her body needs fixing so she is taking testosterone and planning to remove her breasts.

In a close second is the fact that I believe in women's rights and fighting for the rights of something you cannot clearly define is very difficult.

Also I don't believe that the feelings of men who want to dress up as women are more important than the actual safety and dignity of women.

Interestingly I am neither a lifelong feminist nor lefty but now find myself in those camps. My key reasons:

1. Through my 20s and 30s I did a lot of sport to a relatively high amateur level. I trained six days a week on top of a full time job and know the sacrifices I had to make to do that, just as an amateur. Winning spots in teams was everything to me, made me proud and spurred me on, no matter how we performed in competitions. Every single female spot taken by a TIM is a spot taken from a female. The conversation shouldn’t just be about elite sport, it needs to be about all sports. The stats on girls dropping out of sport as teens are terrible and girls don’t need additional barriers.
2. I grew up through the “ladette” years and accepted what I now see as unacceptable comments as banter. It’s only with the benefit of middle aged wisdom that I realise what a profoundly negative impact so much of that had on my self confidence and how it defined my self worth. It is not acceptable for men to make judgements about women in any circumstances, and I see men barging in on females’ sports, spaces, activities and events as the next iteration of that (N.b. I know the laddettes were females, but it was encouraged by the males).
3. Even now I still have body image issues and hate group changing rooms. The thought of a male being allowed into those spaces - the same males who 30 years ago thought it was ok to talk about my breasts, legs, or bum enrages me.
4. I have a daughter. I will not let he go through that.

I'm also an atheist. I have come to consider a belief in gender ideology as akin to a religion (a cult, even). The believers push each other to greater feats of belief in a purity spiral and ostracise non-believers as heretics

I think a belief in gender ideology should only be protected in law to the same extent that religious belief is: believers are rightly protected from discrimination but cannot impose their beliefs on others to the detriment of human rights

I'm interested in reality.

I dont believe in any religion.

I don't think gay and lesbian kids, autistic kids, looked after kids and kids with ten times the number of registered sex offenders as parents should be mutilated or sterilised or live their lives as grown ups with childrens minds and bodies.

Call me crazy like.

I was implicitly told I could do anything growing up. I didn't really worry too much about sexism, i knew i was equal. These regressive stereotypes worry me.

Same here, gender sterotyping, damage to children and erosion of womens sex based rights. Oh and the development of a really horrible bullying culture that tries to shut up people with the wrong opinons while the people doing it stroke their egos about how lovely they think they are. I don't give a fuck about gender and would be happy to never hear the bloody word ever again.
Plus it makes no sense,you have to make yourself stupid to believe in it and I have always resisted making myself stupid, even though I was first called a witch when I was about 7 and it was largely to do with being cleverer than a lot of boys.

Also having a life threatening endocrine system disorder and knowing how little is known about it and the crudity of the treatment I think messing about with endocrine systems is a fucking stupid idea.

When I was growing up I started to do something that there really weren't any women role models for, but because of the way I was brought up and the opportunities I had it simply never occurred to me that I couldn't do it.

Politically, well what the fuck to do? It has led me to think much more in a framework that centres women and deal with the emotional consequences of casting myself loose from any tribal affiliation, which I am now quite comfortable with. Bastards the lot ot them.

Totally agree about men in women's sports affecting all women who want to participate in sport. I know people who say it is unimportant because there are only a few transwomen barging their way into women's sport. Thank you for articulating how important it really is. There are enough barriers to women in sport already!

Like another poster said upthread this whole thing makes no sense whatsoever

none…not even vaguely

how does it make sense that someone says they are something and it becomes fact 😳

how does it make sense that a man can say he is a woman and that means that all his male physical advantages disappear 😳

i will be honest at the start of this i was (slightly) be kind cos these men have issues but then all the AGP men rebranded themselves and then pip bunce decided they could swap and that makes even less sense

its just so stupid

I think it is often men who are GC but don't care that much, because they have less skin in the game 🙁 Women seem to feel a lot more passionately about it (for either side)

All of those reasons resonate with me OP (although I haven't had cancer myself, I'm sorry to hear you've been through all that).

To be honest, other than it occasionally coming up at work (where obviously I don't feel I can say anything), it doesn't impact me on a day to day basis. So I have also wondered why it bothers me so much.

I think the thing that really keeps the issue niggling away at me is the lies. It's all a lie. No-one can change sex (or, indeed, be neither sex). I feel like I'm surrounded by flat earthers and somehow I'm the weird one for still believing what, I'm fairly sure, pretty much everyone thought just a few years ago. There's this strange wide-eyed disingenuous-ness about the whole thing. About both the causes and the effects. I just want to stamp my foot and yell "But it's NOT TRUE!"

I do feel a little better having got that off my chest. Thanks OP!

For me, I think it’s a strong reaction to the discovery that there is a massive movement that has taken over the western world in which women (and others) are being gaslighted on an enormous scale, to the absolute detriment of hard won women’s rights.

Not sure why it took over my brain to the extent it did, but I suspect that part of the reason was the shock (still ongoing) of just how deeply it has been embedded and how easily transactivism has transformed government, laws, police and so much else.

It’s obviously the same for others. Glinner and JK Rowling are two prominent people who have suffered hugely without having any obvious skin in the game, so it’s not a unique experience to find it so compelling that it can’t be ignored, even when it would be difficult to name a direct personal effect of the increasing number of people claiming to be trans on my life.

My first degree is in Philosophy. The sheer lack of logic and reason on the TRA side offends me to the point that I sometimes feel physically uncomfortable thinking about it. Plus all the stuff you said, OP.

I hate the lying / gaslighting. This movement has affected the way I feel about humans - how so many people just don't seem to care about the truth and will sacrifice it in order to be "on trend". How educated people, including scientists, are happy to deny basic reality rather than risk being disapproved of socially or at work. If they're not consciously doing that, then they're frighteningly stupid. How almost all our institutions, which are meant to protect us, have fallen to this. How people and institutions are so easily cowed. So few people are prepared to stand up to this. If this movement can do so well so quickly and easily, then anything can and will happen and there is no safety anywhere.

Yes, that is definitely a massive factor in my fascination with the subject - just how did it manage to get so firmly embedded in governments and institutions so quickly?

I'm currently reading 'The women who wouldn't wheesht' and find it interesting the similar reasons that two authors give for why the governments of Scotland and Ireland are running with it. For Scotland, a desire to show how much more liberal it is than England (especially as Scotland decriminalised homosexuality later than England and Wales). And for Ireland, a desire to show that they have moved on from the child sex abuse scandal/Magdalene laundry scandal and are now a modern liberal country no longer in thrall to the Catholic church.

When you consider that the other European country that is most enthusiastically pro-gender ideology is Germany you wonder... Are the countries that feel guilt about their 20th-century actions the most keen to position themselves as 21st-century modern liberal good guys?

Initially I found it incredibly offensive, that a man would say he was a woman on the inside. I had a white older man tell me he felt black inside once because he liked soul and gospel music so much, it feels like that. Very fucking rude. how dare you reduce my experience of being female to whatever womanly tropes you are thinking of?
How dare you? How is it not cultural appropriation?

But the more you see it, and the unfairness it leads to and the oppression that comes with it, the angrier you get.

Say it out loud: The emperor has no clothes on! 😁

I agree with most things posted above. I think the "no debate" thing really touched a nerve with me though. What do you mean "no debate"? It is so sinister. Why are even the champions of free speech agreeing not to touch this subject? It really frightens me.

I'm completely baffled by the capture of Philosophy departments on this.

My Feminism (!) lecturer has written papers criticising GC women for using 'dog whistles' against TRAs. 😢 (The dog whistles included 'biological women's iirc 🥴)

She was such an inspiration to me back in day, but is now firmly on the GI train (as are many others). Just how??!

Because the movement wants to compel me to say right is left and left is right and I can't carry that cognitive dissonance in my brain. We are a diamorphic species. That's a biological fact . We are not Seahorses.

I will not be told that I must say something that isn't true to keep the other person happy. I won't reinforce the delusions of the mentally ill, because it is a delusion to believe you can actually change sex!!!! Santa isn't real , neither is the tooth fairy and humans cannot change sex.
That felt good!

I'm also a philosophy graduate! (Actually biology + philosophy)

How do you philosophically debate gender ideology when a) the other side refuses to debate the issue, and b) it's so goddammed stupid a belief anyway 😂

(Possibly uncharitable of me but I'm out of patience with them)

Basically, because I believe as a Feminist that we need:

A) the language to explain how the historic disempowerment and exploitation of the female half of humanity through law and violence muatated into cultural structures and norms that perpetuate the same power imbalances to the detriment of women even when we nominally have equality under law

B) The language to explain how we experience and suffer from male sexual entitlement both directly on our bodies and more diffusely through its impact in society

C)
Physical and cultural spaces that are female only to allow us to relax hypervigilence and man-pleasing/man-awareness and without male overtalking and re-explaining so we can reperceive ourselves, our experiences and our relationships both individually and as a group to recognise common factors and differences

So society endorsing the assertion that some male bodies are so like us there can be no dstinction made in law, lamguage and society, or some female bodies are so unlike us there can be no recognition of any commonality, drives a coach and horses through all if this to the detriment of female people speaking and understanding the truth of what it is to be us in our society.

Because I'm a biologist and gender ideology stuff is just so blatantly scientifically untrue, I will not lie about it just as I'm not prepared to lie to placate creationists or homeopathy believers. Also for many reasons mentioned by others in this thread but truth has always been the biggest reason for me because everything comes from there. I know that this is also the case for dp who is a fellow biologist.

I've often wondered that too, I am incensed by this in a way unmatched by any other issue.

For me I think it is the collision of social media and identity politics which has removed people's ability to examine the facts and arrive at their own conclusion. Now you have to believe the 'truths' of your tribe or be banished. Individuals with opinions are no longer freethinkers or radicals, just bigots. I fear for a future where people are not allowed to think their own thoughts.

I too am a Philosophy graduate, and hate the anti-intellectualism of the 'be kind' mob. I am horrified at the number of supposedly intelligent and educated people whose mental contortions to accept that black is white are something to behold.

The authoritarianism implicit in 'No Debate' is horrifying. I was at the pointy end of that in my (gay) swimming club when I dared to question who was allowed in the women's changing rooms. No longer a member, sad.